CHILDHOOD IMMUNIZATIONS: EASE OF OPTING OUT
District 5450 Maternal & Child Health Chair Nan Jarvis, Mountain Foothills Rotary PE Jimmy Dickson, Children’s Hospital Pediatric Infectious Disease Dr. Jessica Cataldi, and Liz Abbott CCIC joined Parents for Vaccinated Communities at the Capitol on February 21 to speak with legislators about the ease of opting out of vaccinating their children in the state. While all 50 states require vaccinations to attend school, 17 states including Colorado allow parents to opt out for personal reasons. Measles which was all but eradicated in 2000 is now returning in outbreaks in Washington, Oregon, and New York.
Measles is highly contagious and can lead to pneumonia or inflammation of the brain. One in four people sick with measles needs to be hospitalized and one in a thousand will die. Young children, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems are at higher risk of complications. Over 9,400 Colorado children were treated for vaccine-preventable diseases in a hospital or emergency department in 2017, resulting in $55.5 million in charges. Also in 2017, Colorado ranked 23rd among U.S. states for childhood immunizations, with 29 percent of children under-immunized at 36 months of age. For more information contact Nan at johnnan@comcast.net